Now we can add some actions to our component. We will start with a very simple change; we will let the user change the value of the count variable by defining callbacks attached to links (also known as anchors) displayed when the component is rendered in a web browser, as shown in Figure 14. Using callbacks allows us to define some code that will be executed when a link is clicked.

Don’t forget that WAComponent>>renderContentOn: is on the instance side.

Each callback is given a Smalltalk block: an anonymous method (strictly, a lexical closure) delimited by [ and ]. Here we send the message callback: (to the result of the anchor message) and pass the block as the argument. In other words, we ask Seaside to execute our callback block whenever the user clicks on the anchor.

Click on the links to see that the counter get increased or decreased as shown in Figure 15.